Tag Archives: leg training

It’s taken me three days to sit here and write this entry. It’s the holidays and to be perfectly honest, I haven’t made the gym a priority this week. I’ve been spending most of my holiday time off being domesticated and spending time with my kiddos, but tomorrow it’s game on and I am ready! I will be doing arms/abs/cardio.

After the below leg workout, I was sore for two days. hah You’d think with the amount of leg work I do, I wouldn’t get sore anymore. I guess increasing some of the weight and throwing in the extra credit does the trick.

My glutes are already sore from last nights workout. I made sure to squeeze my glutes HARD during the barbell glute bridges (pic of exercise above). I used a fixed barbell (don’t do that- haha), but next time I need to use an Olympic bar so I can get under it, instead of lifting it and placing it on my hips. I’ll be able to lift more weight and be a little more comfortable that way.

50 lbs. wasn’t enough to make me feel challenged at rep 8. I could have done 50 reps with 50 lbs. A major drawback to this exercise is that it’s almost bordering on gym porn, but don’t let that put you off too much because the benefits outweigh the negatives. I still believe squats and deadlifts are the best mass builders, but you can activate the glutes and squeeze hard doing the Barbell Glute Bridge, so here is how to do it.

Sit on the ground with a loaded barbell over your legs (don’t go too heavy to start). You may want to add a pad to the bar as it can become quite uncomfortable. Roll the bar so it is directly above the hips then lie flat on the floor.

Now start by driving through the heels, extending your hips vertically through the bar. Your weight should be supported by your upper back rear delts and the heels of your feet.

SLOWLY extend as far as possible and squeeze that contraction hard at the top, then reverse the motion to return to the starting position.

Remember you will activate more of the glutes at the top of the movement so no point going too heavy and just doing half reps! Pay close attention to form and the mind muscle connection on this exercise, your butt should be burning (like how your calves burn after a high volume workout).

I felt like I was pretty weak in my leg workout tonight. I could have pushed a lot more on my vertical leg presses, but I was lazy and didn’t want to get up and add more weight. Terrible, I know. In my defense, my hamstring are still really sore from my last leg training FOUR DAYS AGO. I suppose it was from pushing 250 on my extra credit leg presses and the 6 sets of wide stance squats at 95 lbs. Yeah, that’d do it.

-Segue-

Squats: Make no mistake, the classic barbell squat is one of the cornerstones of countless great lifting programs. It trains everything from your quads, glutes, and hamstrings. I just found the below link that has 27 variations of squats! Christmas miracle maybe? It also has some video clips and this girl isn’t playing with her pistol squat. Jealous! I HAVE to do this. As soon as my legs recover, it’s on!!! Speaking of recovery.. I need a protein shake pronto…

One of the best exercises for you, whether you’re trying to build muscle, lose weight or both is the squat!

However, it’s also one of the most difficult exercises to do properly unless you actually know what you’re doing. Let’s take a look at why this exercise is so great, and then how to perform it properly for maximum results and minimal chance of injury.

Squats work a LOT of muscles in your body. If you’re looking to burn fat, you want to do exercises that trigger as much of your body as possible so it’s all getting worked. On the other side of the coin, if you’re looking to build muscle, your legs and back can put on the most muscle in the shortest amount of time. Sweet! Gimme some quad mass!

A few tips to remember:
Squat down until your thighs are at least parallel to the floor. If you don’t go down that far, you’re cheating yourself and doing a fake squat. Go way down, and you’ll feel it in every muscle in your leg. This will give you a really strong core along with strong legs and a strong back. If you can’t use any weigh yet, that’s OK! Just practice your form (sideways in front of a mirror) with just your body weight until your comfortable with the position and movement.

Do not to extend your knees past your toes. If you’re doing the squats right, you should be sitting back with your ass out and back straight. It may feel a little weird sticking your butt out like that, but that’s the way to do it. It helps prevent your knees going over your toes.

Don’t arch your back. The best way to make sure this doesn’t happen is to keep your head up when you squat, and KEEP YOUR ABS tight throughout the whole exercise (that’s right, squats will even work your abs).

There’s some eye candy for ya. Leg training engages large muscles, is physically demanding, and burns lots of calories. Leg training is especially important for athletic, aesthetic, and anti-aging purposes. Strong legs are built by consistent, variable, and challenging resistance workouts. Cardiovascular work alone is not enough to maintain optimum muscle development for strength and stamina.

As I was looking over my workout prior to going in the gym today, I was a little overwhelmed at first due to the amount of exercises listed. It actually went by pretty fast. I guess I was in the gym for about an hour and half, but I was taking my time. You could blow through this in an hour if you were focused and only took your regular rest breaks. I stop and get water, wait for a machine to free up etc. so it took me a little longer.

I posted the above picture because I thought it was a great visual of the way your form should be during a deadlift. You should always make sure that back is straight with shoulders back. You have to be very conscious of your form during your set to avoid any injuries. I don’t normally correct people in the gym, but today I did. There was an older woman doing dumbbell squats and her butt wasn’t out far enough and her knee was going way past her foot. Her son told her what to do and then walked off. I was close by so when she finished her set I told her to watch herself in the mirror from the side and make sure her knee wasn’t going over her foot. She listened, smiled, and sweetly thanked me, then went on to do the same thing I just told her not to do. I had another gal approach me and say “a lot of people don’t know that” and it was great that I told her. If only she had listened. It’s bad form that is going to mess you up. If you like going to the gym and working out, then don’t screw yourself by getting an injury and end up out of the game for weeks or months waiting for it to heal. The best advice I can give is research how to properly do an exercise on either YouTube or Bodybuilding.com. I prefer to watch a video so I can see the form and motion the whole way through. Until you are comfortable with each exercise there is nothing wrong with doing your research.. It’s your body and your not doing yourself any favors by assuming you know how to do it the right way. From what I see at the gym about 30% are doing it WRONG. Feet going over the knees, using momentum to do roman chair leg lifts, jerking the weight during lat pull downs…wrong wrong wrong. Get it lighter, get it tighter, get it righter? 🙂 Work the muscle you intended to build, not use your whole body and get nothing out of the hard work you are putting it.

Have you ever felt drained, dizzy or even nauseous after an intense weight training session? Well guess what? You should experience one of these symptoms each and every time you properly work out your legs. I felt this mostly after getting off the leg pres machine tonight – just a few seconds of dizziness. I was pushing 230 lbs. and weigh in at – holy s***, I just weighed myself and my scale showed 105 lbs. I will weigh myself at the gym tomorrow and see what that shows. I’ve been holding at 116 for the past year or so, but haven’t weighed myself in well over 2 months. Hmmm.. that’s almost kind of concerning. I still have tons of muscle and really don’t look any different. I think that ghetto scale is wrong.

Working out your legs is also crucial to maintain a nice symmetry, which is simply the proper balance between the size of each and every one of your body’s muscles. (In layman terms, it means you won’t look like a Popsicle, with a muscular upper body and chicken legs)